Monster of Florence

The Monster of Florence (Italian: Il Mostro di Firenze) is the name commonly used by the media in Italy for of a series of 8 double murder cases that took place between 1968 and 1985 in the province of Florence, Italy. Prosecution offices carried on several investigations into the cases for many years. The courts reached the conclusion that the murders were not committed by a single person but by a group of at least four perpetrators, who became later known as "the picknick comarades", and were definitively convicted. The 1968 murder was found to be a case unrelated to the others, albeit that the gun, that probably originally belonged to small local criminality, might be the same involved in the actual Monster cases. The victims were young couples parked in lovers' lane or camping in the surroundings of Florence in dark areas and on New moon periods, the murderers always used multiple weapons (both a cal .22 gun and a knife), they excised sexual parts of the bodies of female victims, and the intent to obtain such fetishes appeared to be the motive of the crimes.

Four local men were arrested, charged, and sometime convicted of the crime at different times. Their names were Stefano Mele (husband of victim Barbara Locci), Pietro Pacciani, Mario Vanni, and Giancarlo Lotti. Critics suggest that the real killer or killers have never been identified. Several other suspects were arrested and held in captivity at various times, but they were later released when subsequent murders using the same weapon and methods cast doubt on their guilt.

Particularly, Pacciani, a farmer known to be a "peeping Tom" (he and his friends Lotti, Vanni and Pucci became known to the chronicles as the "picnic companions", in italian "compagni di merende", by an odd and bizarre expression told in court by Vanni), was suspected to be guilty according to the modus operandi similarities between monster's victims and a man murdered by Pacciani in 1951 who loved his old-time girlfriend. Pacciani served 13 years in prison for this crime; following, he was sentenced to other years of prison for her daughters' rape and domestic abuse on his wife. Pacciani was convicted also for Monster's crimes and condemned to life imprisonment, but the court overturned the verdict at the request of the attorney himself, then annulled by supreme court of cassation. Pacciani died before the new trial. Vanni and Lotti were instead convicted and condemned to life imprisonment. However, these convictions have been criticized and ridiculed in the media.